


The Sign of Two

by waitingtobedistributed



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Light Angst, Re-telling of, Sherlolly - Freeform, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Reichenbach Fall, mollock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-05 03:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11004993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingtobedistributed/pseuds/waitingtobedistributed
Summary: Since the dawn of the Age of Man there had only ever been two kinds of infant born to this world: those born with a soul-mark and those born without.The question is, which one is Sherlock Holmes?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Aine for the prompt.
> 
> Not beta read.

Since the dawn of the Age of Man there had only ever been two kinds of infant born to this world: those born with a soul-mark and those born without.

 

Rare though it was, in almost every generation a child so unloved by the Gods would walk amongst us, distinguished and made inhuman by the absence of the mark of destiny pained upon their skin.

 

Pitied by many – for who could not? - the child was doomed to a solitary existence, never to know love, nor companionship, nor completion in a way that all others but they could have. Scholars believe that the absence of a soul-mark, was proof of the absence of a soul. Singled out by the Gods to wander the Earth alone until their dying day, even then knowing no respite from their loneliness – they that were not possessive of a soul could not upon death have it ascend to the heavens, they were instead doomed to have their spirit endure an eternity trapped between this world and the other, welcomed in neither.

 

Those who could not find pity in their heart for the one not marked by his soulmate’s initial, instead reviled and feared them. In myths, they questioned the purpose of this singular distinction. Why, they asked, would a child be born so reviled and forsaken? Why would the Gods see fit to separate them from their society? Why were they not deemed fit to be a worthy match for one of their own kind? The answer, they concluded, was that this person – this _freak_  – was instead marked by its absence as one to be feared, to be set apart, to be despised.

 

All of them were hunted, tormented. Many of them were killed.

 

Enlightened men instinctively knew the myths to be untrue, yet society was so dispossessed of compassion for these forsaken creatures that it had been many centuries since one had been known.

 

Secrecy was survival. A child born without the mark was disguised by their parents, protected by their loving siblings, sheltered from the scorn of man.

 

They hid in plain sight: offering their celibate lives to devotion of the Gods who had so cruelly cast them aside; or claimed instead that they had suffered a great tragedy and would not know the other half of their soul in this world, but instead in the next.

 

Some withered and died of loneliness.

 

Some were not so lucky.

 

It was with a growing realisation that John Watson believed he knew such a man. His friend. Sherlock Holmes.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Molly Hooper has known from the very beginning who her soul-mate is.

 

Something inside her heart had lit up like a beacon the very first time Sherlock Holmes had swept into her lab, coat billowing, an arrogant smile cocking his lips, eyes sparling like diamonds  – cold, hard. Beautiful. His voice had sounded to her ears like a violin playing sensual notes. His lips – _his lips his lips his lips_ – had paralysed her with the desire to touch them with her own, to kiss, to join, breaths mingling, tongues dancing, licking, biting, possessing.

 

She’d forgotten to breathe.

 

It doesn’t matter that the small mark on the inside of her thigh is an M, (because, really, how unbreakable was a bond between two people who had never met?) or that Sherlock appears to care not a jot for her, Molly _knows_.

 

He’d knocked back her awkward attempts at flirtation, turned an obviously fake smile her way whenever he wanted something from her, insulted, humiliated, maligned her at every opportunity, and yet she still knew.

 

The mark had been faint all of her life, a barely there pale pink pigmentation in a cursive script that she was grateful no one else could see. A late-bloomer, her soul-mark hadn’t fully formed until she was twenty two, a sign her elders told her, that her soul mate was a late-bloomer too. _‘He’s saving himself for the one,’_ her mother had said, _‘and that one is you.’_

 

It’s usually at first touch that a soul-mark responds to its other half. But Molly’s had seared with heat that very first day, Sherlock never once laying a finger on her. Her skin had prickled at the sight of him, and she felt the mark glow hotly, the edges of it rising so prominently that it felt like braille beneath her fingertips. Sherlock’s gaze had swept over her then: cold, systematic in their analysis. Wide eyed, uncomfortable (she thinks _repulsed_ , but pushes the word away), his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips, he had deduced her faulty biology.

 

The magic is old but rare, she has learned. To feel another so strongly, to know their thoughts, to experience their pain, it is the strongest soul bond there is. It’s never been known to exist between those who are not mated by the Gods. Yet here they are, fated and ill-fated at once.

 

He keeps her at arm’s length, a painful distance that makes her flesh and bone ache with the need for him.

 

He’s careful. Sherlock wears gloves, a scarf, none of his skin exposed in a way that there could be a furtive touch, or a fleeting brush of skin. It’s a kindness, in a way. His own soul-mate is somewhere waiting for him yet: she feels it when he’s near, this love he has, a part of him crying out for another, something he has yet to acknowledge.

 

To have him at all, and then to lose him to his soulmate would be unbearable.

 

Perhaps then he’s not so cruel after all.


End file.
